Systems Engineering

What is systems engineering about?  Engineering is “the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people” (Merriam-Webster) . Some dictionaries include “principles” in addition to science and mathematics. 

Traditional engineering focuses on specific physical areas. Civil engineering is about structures: roads, bridges, buildings. Mechanical engineering is about machines: turbines, engines, etc. Systems engineering sits at a higher conceptual level. It focuses on systems, which is the combination of all the different products of the different engineering specialties.

Engineering is about trade-offs. Engineers use their knowledge to maximise the value if the product they are working on, making sure it meets the purpose of the product, at a price, quality, reliability, etc that is required.

Systems engineering is entirely the same but focuses on maximising the value of the system (the interacting combination of the different artefacts).

A civil engineer trades bridge strength and capacity with cost.  They can design a bridge that can carry 100 60 ton main battle tanks at the same time, but at a cost that is prohibitive and does not return value to the sponsor.

A systems engineer trades the characteristics of the bridge with the characteristics of the other entities that interact with the bridge. For example how the bridge serves the needs of a nearby shipping port or the generational growth of the population being served. 

In other words, the SE describes the requirements - the mission, characteristics desired, and the constraints of a bridge, the civil engineer designs the most appropriate bridge to meet the requirements.

BIS Publications Relating to Operational Risk and Resilience

 The BCBS under BIS has always been a core source for operational risk standards for banks and countires whose central banks are members of the BIS. 

The core documents include:

Principles for the Sound Management of Operational Risk

• https://www.bis.org/publications/fsi-summary-principles-sound-management-operational-risk-psmor-executive-summary
• https://www.bis.org/publications/202103-guidelines-revisions-principles-sound-management-operational-risk

Principles for Operational Resilience (2021)

• https://www.bis.org/publications/202103-guidelines-principles-operational-resilience

Sound Practices for Implications of Fintech Developments for Banks and Bank Supervisors (2018)

• https://www.bis.org/publications/201802-practices-sound-practices-implications-fintech-developments-banks-and-bank-supervisors

Regulatory and Supervisory Approaches to Consumer Protection in Digital Financial Services (2019/2020)

Cyber Resilience: Range of Practices (2018) & Revisions on Third-Party Risk

• https://www.bis.org/publications/cyber-resilience-range-practice

The FSB also has a set of cyber resilience guidelines relevant for operational risk and resilience

• https://www.fsb.org/work-of-the-fsb/financial-innovation-and-structural-change/cyber-resilience/

Invalidation and Unverification

There's two kinds of people. Those who make LinkedIn posts claiming that most people confuse Verification and Validation with one another, and those who don't make such posts.

The first kind of people remind us that:

Verification asks "Did we build the thing right?"

Validation asks "Did we build the right thing?"

One method of verification is testing. Many people see testing as a way to show that something, like a software, has no errors. But many seasoned testers (for example Glen Myers in his classic "The Art of Software Testing") say this view is upside down. In testing, the first presumption is that the software has errors, and the purpose of testing is to uncover those errors.

So testing "fails" when it does not find errors. Testing is successful when it does find errors. The more, and them more serious, the better.

So why not take the same view for Verification and Validation? Considering that we really cannot verify full that the product was built right, in the same way that testing cannot guarantee that the software has no errors. Nor can we guarantee that "we built the right thing" but can only find evidence why it was not the right thing"

Verification - start with the assumption that we built the thing wrong somewhere find evidence of this.

Validation - start with the assumption that we built the wrong thing somewhere and finds evidence of this.

Bruce Lee is a Lean Guru

Bruce Lee may well be a lean guru. Consider his most famous teaching:

"Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own" - Bruce Lee

"Absorb what is useful " = learn, from others and from yourself , what is useful, that is, what has value. Know what value means.

"Reject what is useless" = know what is waste, and discard it.

"Add what is your own" = don't just copy TPS (Toyota Production System)..

Scientific Advertising (Claude C Hopkins)

I realised there must be something that the profesison of advertising can teach people who write CVs. After all,  a CV is a marketing tool. So I decided to ask AI which advertising related books are good to read if one wanted to learn the principles of writing memorable copy that would generate sales. Or in the case of a CV, generate an interview. 

The couple of AI's that I poked with this question gave me two sets of books to read. One common book they both recommended to read first is Hopkin's Scientific Advertising.

It was a very stern book. Very opinionated. The author frowns on any attempt at humour in advertising. Advertising must convey information. Advertising must generate sales. Anything else is failure.

There are some very good information in the book, some of which challenges current thinking and so the reader must think about whether they agree with Hopkins or not. Hopkins passed away in 1932, and the book itself was written in 1923. It must reflect some of the thinking at the time. But some principles are timeless. So, even an advertising legend as Ian Ogilvy gives the book his heartiest endorsement.

On interesting point the author made is that no one reads advertising (or resumes) for entertainment. They are looking for information. One thing to keep in mind.

Capitalism

Why does capitalism have such a bad name in some sectors? 

It's simply a legal, economic, and social framework that gives everyone the right to use their own money and resources to make money. 

If people don't have the right to use their money to make money through entrepreneurship, then who has the right to use the people's money to make money?  Why would that other entity have that right? 

If people don't have the right to use their money to make money for themselves, then they are only allowed to use their money to buy goods for themselves? People are only allowed to be consumers and employees.

Capitalism gives people the right, but not the obligation, to use their money to make money for themselves. In a socialist or communist economy, creation of products and services belongs to the government. That government provides those products and services by taxing people. So, in short, the people have no option but to give their money to the government.

In other words:

1. Capitalism - Freedom. You have the right but not the obligation to use your money to make money for yourself.
2. Socialism / Capitalism - Loss of Freedom. You have the obligation to give you money to the government, for the government to decide how to use your money to provide goods and services to whomever they want. This government is the same group of people who mismanage people's money. Why would you trust them to know what's best for your money?

Writing Stories

Good fiction is just good storytelling of a good story. It's not about good "writing". The "style" of writing is not the goal. Readers won't be captured for long because of the writing style. In fact, the style, if too obvious can be distracting.

John Grisham is a terrific storyteller, but his writing style is not very distinctive. Surely he cultivated this lack of distinctiveness on purpose. His brilliance is in the way he tells stories. The foundation is of course his writing style, but the point is, the style is receded. The story is the focus.

Writing is not about the words on the paper but about the scenery and events that the reader builds up in their mind as they read. 

So writers need to be careful not to burden the reader with too many details that the scene in their mind becomes burdensome. Detail that brings new enlightenment to the reader is often welcome. When a character enters a building, saying something informative about the uniqueness of the building can be satisfying for the reader. Here I refer to informative that is factually true in the real world. 

Even if the building is completely fictional, the writer may refer to its (fictional) architect as someone influenced by a certain non-fictionaly style or culture, and the idea behin that style, and therefore this building, like other buildings influenced by that style, has this certain feature. The reader then files away this information and is delighted when they do encounter in their real world that certain style in a certain building. One simple but overused example, is the fact that in some countries, Hong Kong for example, buildings don't have a "4th floor" (the floors go: ground, one, two, three, five,...)

The reader is engaged when the story brings them to a scenario where a character encounters something new to the reader. 

The readers is fascinated -- "This is new to me. How will this character intaract with this scenario? How will normal characters interact with this scenario?"

The read is also engaged when the story brings them to a scenario where the reader has themselves been before. 

The reader is again fascinated -- "How will this character react to the scenario? Is that how I could have reacted? Why didn't I?". In this case, where the reader has actual experience, the writer is very much at risk of being caught. When they make up things that is so different from actual reality, the reader gets bummed. "That's not really how it is. This writer has never been there."

There are other writers with a distinctive style. Tom Wolfe, Carl Sagan, both are very identifiable. But even for them, the style is just the vehicle for the stories they are telling. 

It's what you know that ain't so, Mark Twain reminds us. But in my experience, also, "It's what you know that you don't do". Or, as Mao Tse Tung reportedly said, "To know and not to use, is not yet to know"

Nitin Nohria's Formula for Change

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/change-formula-nitin-nohria-envie/

It feels somewhat sickening to realise halfway through that what you are reading, no matter how well written, is AI-generated. Soon the only way to know if something you are consuming is not AI-generated is to talk to a person face to face. Maybe generative AI will bring back people to normal social skills.